Make the professionals pay

Published: 3 February, 2011

• YOU ask for readers’ comments on Camden’s plans to “go begging to the bankers” and to argue that “a fraction of their income from bonuses could save libraries or kickstart school repairs”.

I understand that this plea is also to be sent to lawyers. 

Of course people in this situation should help; in fact, far from being begged to, they should be forced to by some sort of local equivalent of a windfall tax on their bonuses!  

I wonder how many of them have – quite legally, I stress, but also in my very strong opinion morally reprehensibly – avoided paying their fair share of tax; which, if they had paid it, would have put the country in a far better financial position than it currently finds itself in. 

Benefit fraud, which governments take far more action on, costs the country a minute fraction of what tax avoidance/evasion does.  

I hope Camden, and indeed, other councils, does whatever it can to get bankers and lawyers and other residents in a similar financial situation to pay their fair share and keep services running as they should be, especially those benefiting the poorest.

People in highly-paid professions may argue that they work hard but so do people in minimum-wage jobs.

MARGARET KING
Belsize Grove, NW3